Move over, Huntsman girls, there’s a new embarrassing presidential candidate child in town, and he’s itching to steal the crown, apparently. While father Mitt Romney campaigns for next week’s Iowa caucus, his son Matt and some of his brothers are stumping for him in New Hampshire. Asked about his father’s tax returns, Matt tried to flip the issue around on President Obama by, er… demanding to see his birth certificate. Does he mean this one, by any chance?

Anderson Cooper dedicated his “Ridiculist” segment last night to a phenomenon that, sadly, apparently still exists: President Obama’s birther brigade, centered at right-wing blog World Net Daily. World Net Daily, Cooper narrates, has taken to flying planes around areas with high concentrations of people– high concentrations of people under roofs, where they cannot see the planes.

News of Donald Trump‘s selection as moderator of a coming Newsmax sponsored GOP Debate makes a complete mockery of an institutional process that is already short on credibility and gravitas. Any serious GOP candidate should follow Jon Hunstman‘s lead, do the right thing, and politely decline participation. Who will be next in line to show leadership and bow out of this sham of a debate?

The entire first block of Anderson Cooper‘s program last night was devoted to keeping Rick Perry “honest” on his comments, or more accurately non-comments, about President Obama’s birth certificate. The previous night, his 10pm competitor Greta Van Susteren interviewed Donald Trump on his current view of Obama’s birth certificate. Trump (somewhat disingenuously) suggested that they “shouldn’t be talking about it” and even mocked her for posing it as the first question (he then proceeded into la la land with comments like “I am not a fan” and “not a believer” in the validity of it). In fact, in the two weeks before Rick Perry’s interview in Parade Magazine came out, the fake controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate earned barely a mention on cable news. According to the television transcript database TV Eyes, the terms “birther” and “birth certificate” was only mentioned 8 times across all of cable news. But since Friday, the terms “birther” and birth certificate were referenced 180 times; Fox News mentioned both 29 times, CNN 48, and MSNBC led with 103 mentions.

After resurrecting the long-dormant “Birther” conspiracy about President Obama’s birth certificate in an interview with Parade Magazine, Texas Gov. Rick Perry doubled and tripled-down on the issue this week. Now, though, The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Perry now says he has “no doubt” that President Obama was born in the United States, and that he was “kidding around” when he raised the issue several times this week. Has his flirtation with the Birthers, and Donald Trump, rendered his candidacy a joke?

A long, long time ago, in early 2011, reality TV star and real estate personality Donald Trump comically became a frontrunner in Republican primary polls after questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Well, despite the President releasing a long-form birth certificate that should have ended the discussion, Trump revealed tonight to Greta Van Susteren that he’s just not convinced. Maybe those investigators in Hawaii found something new?

During Rick Perry‘s press conference today about his flat tax plan, CNN reporter Jim Acosta posed a question to the Texas Governor about his recent comments about President Obama’s birth certificate. “You raised the issue of the president’s birth certificate over the weekend. I’m just curious what will it take to convince you that the president was born in this country? And do you have any plans to release your birth certificate?” Acosta asked.

Rick Perry, man. Bless his heart. The GOP presidential hopeful just seemingly refuses to filter or censor himself for the media, which results in such gems as Perry telling CNBC that it’s “fun” to keep the so-called birther controversy over Barack Obama‘s country of origin going.

The biggest problem with yesterday’s revelation that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has reopened the President’s birth certificate as a campaign issue was the fact that there was no audio or video of Perry’s interview with Parade Magazine. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough remedied that situation, somewhat, this morning, when he drafted Willie Geist and Mark Halperin into a dramatic reenactment of the beleaguered former frontrunner’s absurd interview, in which he expresses doubt about the President’s birthplace.

Just when you thought it was safe to take Orly Taitz off of your producer’s speed-dial, Texas Gov. and struggling Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry throws a “Birther” Hail Orly in a Parade Magazine interview. Months after President Obama crushed then-GOP frontrunner Donald Trump by producing his long-form birth certificate and Osama bin Laden‘s long-form corpse, Perry told Parade that he had no idea if the document was real, and that he hopes to secure The Donald’s endorsement.

It turns out that a recent “birther” sign — which also appeared at the recent Iowa debate in the form of a large billboard — comes courtesy of the folks over at WorldNetDaily, who are not quite the greatest fans of Obama. Maddow described their mission as essentially “trying to make a buck off the more gullible elements of the conservative base.”

She then pointed to some of the group’s previous projects, such as their reports on the need to wage a war on Islam itself rather than on terrorists acting under their own fundamentalist interpretations. Maddow brought on Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman, who broke a rather amazing series of reports about how the person behind that WorldNetDaily report has been instructing FBI counter-terrorism officers using ideas prevalent in what Maddow describes as the fringe of the right wing.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart is, like so many of us, saddened and discouraged by Donald Trump‘s decision not to run in 2012. For one, with less Trumpage in the media, we might never learn what it was that his team of private investigators found in their search for Barack Obama‘s birth certificate in Hawaii.

But it would now appear that Trump’s meteoric rise to the tops of these polls and the media frenzy that came along with it may end up being footnotes in his biography (Too Trump To Trump: A Portrait Of Donald Trump, with a forward by Donald Trump. Illustrations by Trump, Donald). Today, Public Policy Polling revealed that his popularity has dropped both quickly and dramatically.

The New York Daily News, among many, is not exactly impressed with the pseudo-candidacy of real estate person Donald Trump, and today made it abundantly clear with a cover calling the mogul a “birther” and “racist” and an accompanying story entitled “Mickey Mouse Donald.” On tonight’s Factor, Bill O’Reilly took publisher Mort Zuckerman to task over the racist allegations, which Zuckerman argued were legitimate stemming from Trump’s birther obsession.

Where has Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal been all week? President Obama’s birth certificate finally retired as a meme last week as the President released the long-form version and rebooted the news cycle with news of Osama Bin Laden‘s death. After the “birthers” hijacked the public consciousness for a good month, no one even knows who Donald Trump is anymore, and yet Jindal chose yesterday to release his birth certificate to make a point.

Just when you thought every angle in the “Birther” controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s birth place (and legitimacy as president) had been all too thoroughly scrutinized there comes this. During a live interview with reality TV show host Donald Trump, CNN’s Don Lemon suggested that it may not have even mattered where Obama was born “since what exactly natural-born is has never been litigated.”

Despite Donald Trump being the loudest and most public face of the “Birther” movement, David Axelrod, advisor for President Obama’s re-election campaign, was quick to point out to David Gregory that it was actually the news media that forced Obama to release the long-form birth certificate and not Trump. Although Axelrod was happy to allow Trump a “little ego boost,” sarcastically saying he needs that.

Chris Matthews wondered whether after the release of President Obama’s birth certificate, is “birther talk” now officially over or will it continue to be a factor in the 2012 presidential campaign? His panel of guests agreed it was a good idea for Obama to release the birth certificate, but worried about racial undertones that were starting to plague the campaign rhetoric, especially as a result of Donald Trump‘s continued musings.

The Fox News Watch panel weighed in on President Obama’s release of his birth certificate, with Alan Colmes worrying that such demands being made of Obama hinted at racism, while Judith Miller suggested the timing of Obama’s release was completely political. Host Jon Scott concluded that if the White House purposely allowed these questions about Obama’s background to percolate to exploit political benefit, then that’s “pretty cynical.”

Republican Senator Rand Paul spoke in New Hampshire this morning to a group of Republicans and had some tough words for Donald Trump, the current leader amongst potential GOP primary voters. Urging that the party should “look to Republicans who not only talk the talk, but walk the walk,” Paul warned that once Republicans learn more about Trump, they are not going to like what they find out.

David Letterman joined in on the birth certificate fun last night, presenting the “Top Ten Surprises On Obama’s Birth Certificate.” Most of the entries were groan-inducing, but at least a couple of his jokes were genuinely funny for all audiences, no matter one’s perspective of the never-ending controversy.

To answer the question of why some stories will never ever die, last night on Follow the Money, host Eric Bolling invited political activist and “Birther” crusader Pamela Geller on to analyze the authenticity of the long-form birth certificate released yesterday by President Obama. Geller not only thanked Donald Trump and bemoaned “how the media protects [Obama],” but she also thought there was a possibility that this document was altered. Here we go again.

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward appeared on Morning Joe to discuss some behind the scenes details regarding the White House personnel changes involving Leon Panetta and David Petraeus, but also took time to scold the media for hyping the “manufactured controversy” with President Obama’s birth certificate. Though Mika Brzezinski took issue with Woodard and didn’t understand his assessment that “the news media has got to get a handle on itself on this,” as she argued if Obama held a press conference on the issue, then it is worth discussing.

Nobody seems to be happier than Ann Coulter that the Birther controversy is over, because now she can get attention for criticizing President Obama on issues that are actually important. Coulter usually known for her outrageous statements that some don’t consider to be serious, asks a question that would likely find much liberal support: “what on Earth are we [still] doing in Afghanistan?”

Rachel Maddow walked something of a fine line on her show tonight, balancing covering birtherism (“Reporting on spending press time covering ‘birtherism’ itself, I think is a defensible thing.”) and lending even more coverage and attention to Donald Trump and the headline (and ratings?)-grabbing birther movement. Maddow set out to figure out why (non-Fox News) journalists would devote time to covering the whereabouts of Barack Obama‘s birth certificate